The paper tries to depict the game of manipulation in one type of oral discourse, namely in negotiation. The game of manipulation in negotiation is not relaxed or interest-free; on the contrary, it is a game in which the players try to maximize their gains by finding the best strategy necessary in a certain situation. We are trying to see, in several examples of recorded and transcribed negotiations, how some strategies of manipulation work.

The term negotiation is more and more frequently used nowadays not only in relation to commerce or economic activities, but also in many other domains. Irrespective of the area where the term negotiation appears, it is generally associated to the idea of conflict or to the one of adjusting the opinions of the persons involved. People negotiate every day and almost everywhere (in the family, at work, in the street, in a shop etc.), whenever they want to gain something or to solve differences of opinion. Not only material objects can be negotiated, but also relationships, meanings, identities. This explains …

In our paper we try to analyse argumentation at the level of one particular type of oral discourse, negotiation, taking into consideration not only the strategic behaviour of the locutor, but also the reaction of the interlocutor; we try to see the linguistic means through which the latter can provoke/maintain the conflict, or cooperate in order to reach an agreement